Edmund D. Sowers arrived in the area, that is now West Irving, from Illinois in 1856 and claimed 32 acres of good land with available spring water in the Parsons headright, or land grant, near what is now Pioneer Dr. and Beltline roads in Irving, which is just to the west of the Sowers cemetery.
 

The Parsons land grant was basically a rectangle of land extending east, west and south about 1 1⁄2 to 2 miles with the cemetery on the north side.
 

Sowers was the owner of the first store in the Sowers community and the town was sometimes called Sowers Store. Along with the store, it had a school, and two physicians.
 

Before the civil war began in 1861, there was a once per week mail stop at the Sowers store on the Dallas to Birdville route. It was discontinued for several years during the war. Birdville’s original name was Ft. Bird and was the earliest settlement in Tarrant Co. Birdville is just north of Ft. Worth and close to Hurst and N. Richland Hills. It was annexed into Haltom City in 1990.
 

After the civil war which ended in 1865, Mr. Sowers reestablished a post office and served as postmaster for the Sowers area before it passed to H.N. Lucas. The mail route was then Dallas to Grapevine serving Sowers and Estelle. Estelle being just east of present day DFW airport near the Dallas and Tarrant county line.
 

In 1868 it’s believed that the first interments at the cemetery were on the Parsons land grant, marked only with stones and on a section of the cemetery that would be known as Beulahland Memorial Park in the 1930’s. According to folklore and documented on the Texas Historical marker (the first in Irving dedicated in 1973), these graves were believed to be unmarked graves of a woman and her daughter who befell an unknown tragic death.
 

To challenge the folklore of the first interments of 1868, and to add a level of complication, 1867 is the oldest death date in the cemetery on a modern day stone of Catherine Caster Hawes Worthington who is also buried on this same northernmost section of the cemetery.
 

To add to the lore, a recently discovered newspaper article from 1964 sites a man with the surname Applewhite as the earliest interment. The article specifically mentions the Applewhite grave as one of the motivations for Sower’s adjacent property donation in 1874.
 

Whatever the history of these earliest graves, on August 14, 1874 Mr. Sowers honored existing gravesites by providing a property for school, church and cemetery purposes on his property south and adjacent to the earliest gravesites. This is the southwest portion of today’s cemetery. On his land he gave free plots to members of the community. It is worth noting that there are graves on this section of property that are older than 1874.
 

County land records reveal that the owner of the original burial property was probably SS Connor and not Sevier Smalley as indicated on the historical marker. The records obtained from the State for the historical marker application did not dispute this newly discovered fact. The earliest county land records indicate that Sevier Smalley did not yet live in the state and was not of an age to own property in 1868. County records further reveal that Smalley did not purchase the property until 1891 from Pete and Lidia Faucher.